Everwild (The Skinjacker Trilogy)

by Neal Shusterman

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  where an eye should be, and an eye instead of a nose. His cheeks were at different heights, and his mouth was entirely upside down. It was as if someone had been playing Evil Mr. Potato Head with his face.

  "Who are you? Let me go!"

  There were more of them now. A dozen of them, and they were still coming out of the woodwork, grabbing her, keeping her from moving. Every one of them had skewed features, but no two were exactly alike. Picassoids, Allie decided to call them, because they looked like something Pablo Picasso might have painted on a very, very bad day.

  "Don't let her skinjack!" shouted the Picassoid in charge, who had blue hair that was somehow familiar.

  "You have to let me go!" she shouted, while behind her, the tour bus left for the mansion.

  "I don't think so," their leader said. "We've been looking everywhere for you, Miss Allie."

  She had to talk her way out of this, and she thought she knew just the thing. "Are you Mary's children? I'm here to help her," Allie said. "I've seen the error of my ways, and I'm here to beg for forgiveness--now LET ME GO!"

  The Picassoids looked to one another, then back to Allie. "We don't work for the Sky Witch," the blue-haired Picassoid said. "We serve a monster. The one true monster of Everlost."

  Allie did not like the sound of that. "What monster do you mean?"

  Then he gave her an unpleasant upside-down smile. "We serve the McGill."

  ***

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  Mikey McGill was not blessed with good timing.

  In life he would get his knuckles rapped repeatedly for looking at his neighbor's paper at precisely the moment the schoolmaster would look at him. He jumped in front of a speeding train at precisely the wrong moment, sending him and his sister to Everlost--and even in Everlost, he had chosen to spy on Allie at precisely the moment she had kissed Milos.

  Naturally it would follow that he would capture Allie at the worst possible moment in this, or any other, universe.

  His new minions--the Afterlights he had picked up in Nashville--feared him, and obeyed his commands, but that wasn't enough. He made them pledge themselves to him, but that still wasn't enough. He twisted and tweaked their faces using his talent of change to change them, but none of this could fill the hole inside him. Allie was the only one who could fill it, and so he followed her to Memphis. Since he was convinced he would never win Allie back, he decided the next best thing was to steal her away.

  The Picassoids brought Allie to Mikey in an old-fashioned paddy wagon--a cell on wheels that had crossed into Everlost, God knows when.

  When Mikey saw them approaching with Allie in the cage, he felt a heart begin to swell in his chest, threatening to transform his entire body into a bloody beating thing. He allowed his bad emotions to overwhelm the good, forced his heart back down his throat, and he strode forward encased in the same armor that had grown the day he ran away. Every step shook the ground as he approached her. Then, when he was right in front of her, he spilled himself through

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  his open mouth, turning inside out, revealing the horrible thing he had become.

  "Look at me!" he demanded. "Look at me." Although he didn't have to say it, because she was already looking. He wanted her to scream, he wanted her to cry, he wanted her to feel the misery of what she had done to him ... but she did not react the way he expected. He sprouted himself an extra eye so he could read her more clearly.

  "Mikey!" she grabbed the bars, peering through at him, not repulsed, not averting her eyes in the least. "Mikey! You didn't leave! You're still here!"

  There was a good reason why Mikey, even with an extra eye, couldn't read Allie. That was because Allie found her emotions were such a strange mix, they all blended together into something unidentifiable. There was incredible joy in knowing that Mikey hadn't left Everlost, but confusion as to why he had turned into this nasty-looking thing. Rather than being horrified, she found herself impressed by it and deeply saddened at the same time. She knew him well enough now to know that his shell was merely that: a mask that he used to express the things he couldn't put into words. Was this, then, the manifestation of what he had been feeling? She couldn't deny that Mikey had been sullen and subdued while he was locked into simple human form--and although she never wanted to see him as a monster again, there were parts of the monster she missed. The truth was, Mikey was boring when he was beautiful.

  But what was she thinking? None of this mattered at the moment. Nick was in danger! She had to save Nick!

  "Mikey, listen to me!"

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  "No, you listen to ME!" He didn't care what she had to say. She would not rob him of this moment! He reached into a fold in his awful body that had once been a pocket, and he pulled out a coin. "You chose Milos over me!" Then he grabbed Allie's hand. "If I can't have you, then no one will!" and he placed the coin firmly in her palm, closing her fingers around it. He was determined to stay silent as she vanished into the light, but he couldn't stop himself from saying the words he could never before say out loud.

  "I love you, Allie... ."

  Then he waited for her to get where she was going.

  He waited.

  And he waited.

  But Allie's eyes did not grow wide with cosmic wonder. The light of infinity did not shine on her face. She did not disappear in a rainbow twinkling of light. She stood there mesmerized--dazzled by his heartfelt confession, but she did not vanish. Then, she squeezed his hand firmly, but lovingly, and said:

  "Mikey, we need to talk."

  He let go of her hand, not knowing what to do, because he had not seen anything beyond this moment. The way he imagined it, Allie would be gone, he would wallow forever in the misery of it, and that would be that. But instead, Allie gave the coin back to him. "It doesn't work for skinjackers," she said. "There's a lot I have to tell you, but now's not the time. You have to let me go now. I have to help Nick."

  Mikey turned his transformed hand back to the hand of a boy and gently took the coin. "It doesn't work for me, either. So neither of us is ready."

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  Allie looked at his humanized hand, surprised. "How did you do that?"

  "I can do a lot of things," Mikey said, and to prove it, he took on his normal boyish face once more, on the body of the monster. Allie was amazed.

  "You can change at will?"

  "You have a power," said Mikey, "and so do I."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I thought you hated the monster."

  "You were never the monster you pretend to be, Mikey. Not then, and not now."

  "I am if I want to be. I am whatever I want to be."

  Allie shook her head and smiled. "Then I love all the things you choose to be, because beneath it all, you're still Mikey McGill."

  Mikey took a step back. Was she trying to trick him into freeing her? "But ... but you love Milos... ."

  Allie laughed. "Is that what you think? Is that why you left?"

  "I saw you kiss him... ."

  She gasped at the realization that he had seen the kiss. But then she said, "Mikey, you are such an idiot." Then she looked him in the eye and said, "You're the one I love."

  Mikey found his ears starting to grow larger all by themselves--as if by doubling his hearing it would help him to understand. "Prove it."

  "Okay, fine!" Allie said. "Give me your worst. The most horrible thing you can imagine--but do it quickly!"

  And so Mikey dug inside himself to find the worst of all his feelings, the worst of all his fears, the very worst of

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  himself. Then he pushed forth a face so hideous his followers turned their eyes away in terror. A face that could melt the living, or at the very least turn them to stone. A face so God-awful it defied the ability of any language to describe.

  And yet Allie not only looked at him, but she reached out through the bars, pulled the horrible head to hers, and she kissed him.

  The kiss was the definition of perf
ect. True, it lacked the heat, the passion, the breathlessness of the living-world kiss she had given Milos, but this had something greater. More than a flash of fire, it had an unbreakable, perhaps eternal bond of connection. Mikey had transformed back into himself by the end of the kiss, and the moment their lips parted he knew, as he should have known long, long ago, that no one--not Milos, not another Afterlight, not anyone in any world--could ever come between him and Allie, from now until the day they met their maker.

  "Now please, Mikey. Please let me go help Nick."

  Suddenly Mikey felt naked and exposed before her, so he stepped back and pulled himself in, folding into his armor shell. Then he bore down and forced his armor to dissolve. It was harder than changing his features, harder than growing an arm or an eye or a tentacle, but he did it, and promised himself he would never grow the armor again.

  He turned to his followers who looked at him with shock and surprise.

  "Hey--you're not the McGill," said one of them. Mikey considered turning himself horrible just to scare the kid into line, but he decided he didn't want to. He could be whatever he wanted to be, but there were many more parts

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  he wanted to play beyond that of a monster. So instead of fangs, he sprouted himself a pair of tall white ears. "No, I'm the Easter Bunny," he told them. "Now free Allie from that cage!"

  And they were all so bewildered that they hopped right to it.

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  CHAPTER 36 The Intolerable Nexus of Extremes

  Graceland had a faint but perpetual smell of peanut butter and bananas.

  "Even better now with chocolate," offered Zin, as she and Nick stepped inside.

  From the moment Nick arrived, he knew there was something odd about the world-famous tourist attraction. The floors were both soft and solid at the same time, and everywhere he looked Nick saw double. He wanted to chalk it up to his own failing vision, but he knew it was more than that.

  "What is this, some sorta funhouse?" asked Zin, but Nick suspected there was no fun to be had for anyone but the tourists. This is a vortex, Nick realized. He sensed it would be wise to leave, but he said he would meet Mary here, and he wouldn't go back on his word.

  He had come with a team of Afterlights, but told them to wait outside, as he went in with Zin. They moved through rooms that alternated between elegant and absurd, and the air was filled with the faint echoes of a thousand parties. Of course, all the living heard was "Love Me Tender" pumped

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  in through the speaker system, but they were beginning to notice an uncanny aroma of chocolate.

  Toward the back of the mansion, Nick and Zin found the infamous Jungle Room, full of leopard- and zebra-skin furniture and green shag carpeting--not just on the floor, but on the ceiling, too. There they waited for Mary.

  Nick didn't feel well at all, and this was troubling, because you couldn't feel sick in Everlost. Yet there was a fever burning within him, rising from the deepest part of his soul, radiating out.

  Zin nervously doodled on her prop notepad to pass the time. "What if she don't come?"

  "She'll come," said Nick.

  When all the clocks in the house struck five, and Mary hadn't arrived, Nick began to worry. Mary was never late, and with each passing minute Nick felt worse.

  "She's not comin'" said Zin. "Let's get outta this place, it gives me the creeps."

  "She'll be here."

  Nick's fever peaked, and then it finally broke. He began to sweat, but as he tried to wipe it away, he realized it wasn't perspiration he was sweating. It was chocolate.

  Please let her come soon, he thought.

  Nick had arrived twenty minutes early. Mary arrived ten minutes late.

  She approached Graceland alone with no outward fear, but she could not deny that inwardly she was terrified. Not fear of Graceland, but fear of her own reaction when she saw Nick. The plan, she thought, stick to the plan. Speedo had

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  his part, Milos and the skinjackers had theirs, and so did she. Mary comforted herself in knowing that she had the moral high ground over Nick, which meant that if there was any justice in the universe, she would be properly rewarded for her efforts today.

  Twenty of Nick's Afterlights stood outside the Graceland mansion, looking at the troublesome way it shifted in and out of focus. As Mary approached, they parted, staring at her in awe and in fear, but she only smiled at them.

  "Take heart," she told them. "Whatever your worries, I promise things will be better for you from now on." Then she walked into the vortex.

  The overall decor of the mansion did not suit Mary's tastes. The last dwindling groups of tourists moved about the place on guided tours. Mary ignored them, and followed the scent of chocolate to a garish African-themed room, where she found Nick waiting. She had to fight the urge to run to him, shake him, hug him, hit him. No! She had to maintain a cool distance, or she would never be able to bear the burden of this critical hour.

  Then she realized Nick wasn't alone. A grungy Afterlight in a Confederate uniform stood beside him, notepad in hand, holding the pencil the way a monkey might hold a spoon. Mary wasn't fooled. She knew about the Ripper. In fact, this was one of the reasons Mary had come alone. Nick's sense of honor would put him at a distinct disadvantage, for he would never have the Ripper attack a lone, defenseless girl. She hoped.

  Nick stood when he saw her, and she took a good look at him. It was as she suspected: the chocolate had spread,

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  consuming his thoughts, and thus his body. Calling him "the Chocolate Ogre" had done its damage, and now it had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most of him was covered in it now. Only an arm and a third of his face remained clear, but the skin was already turning moist and darkening. It was the effect of the vortex. All she had to do was stall and she would defeat him without lifting a finger. You brought this on yourself, Nick, she wanted to say, but couldn't bring herself to do it.

  "Hello, Mary."

  "Hello, Nick."

  She still loved him deeply, but as she looked at him now, she recoiled, feeling her love curdle into pity. Seeing him this decrepit state allowed her to tell herself that Nick was gone, and all that remained was the Chocolate Ogre--a creature that needed to be put out of its misery.

  It was easier now to keep her distance. "What shall we say to each other, Nick?"

  "How about 'good to see you'?" he said, his voice raspy and thick. Barely human. He coughed a thick, liquid rattle.

  "Yes," said Mary. "And it is good to see you. Truly." Mary could feel the effect of the vortex herself, but she knew she would not have to endure it as long as Nick. That's why she came late. Yet its effect was different on her. She did not feel weighed down, but enlightened. She actually felt stronger.

  "I've missed you," Nick said.

  "Have you? Is that why you continue to be a thorn in my side? Are you a little boy with a crush, seeking attention?" His chocolate oozed a little darker. Mary sighed. "I've missed you, too," she admitted.

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  Nick shrugged, a little bit awkward in the moment. "I'd reach out and hold you, but I might dirty your perfect dress."

  Mary sadly shook her head. "It shouldn't be this way between us, Nick. Why must you rally against me so?"

  "The same reason you fight me. Just like you, I have to do what I believe is right, and freeing kids from this place is the right thing to do."

  "We are here to build Everlost, not to empty it!"

  "How can you be so smart, and so wrong?"

  Mary closed her eyes, resigned that there would be no last-minute salvation for Nick. He would never see things her way.

  "Coming here tonight," she said, "was the first 'right thing' you've done in a long time."

  Nick shifted, and she could see his left shoulder sag, beginning to lose human shape. She wanted to look away, but instead she watched it happen, because she knew witnessing this was part of her personal penance for having trusted Nick in the first place.r />
  "If you have a peace proposal, let's hear it," said Nick, his voice sounding less human by the moment.

  Mary shook her head. "There is no proposal," she told him. "I will not compromise my integrity for you. Every Afterlight in Everlost deserves the peace and comfort that I have to give. I will not sacrifice a single one for a treaty with you."

  "Then why are we here?"

  Mary smiled in grim triumph. "To accept your unconditional surrender, of course. Right now my children are

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  storming your train, and taking your army prisoner. There will be no one for you to return to, Nick. I've already won."

  From where Nick stood, Mary was just as beautiful, just as powerful as she ever was--perhaps even more so--for it seemed this place magnified both her beauty and her powerful presence. But in a moment she would deflate. A little boy with a crush--is that what she thought? Now he took guilty pleasure in the look of despair that would soon be filling that beautiful face.

  "Your children are going to have a surprise," he told her. "You have two hundred Afterlights, I have four hundred. My army will capture them, hand them coins, and for a second time 'your children' will be set free--but thank you for sending them to the train. It makes it easier that way."

  Mary's reaction was not what Nick expected. She tossed back her hair, and shifted her shoulders in proud defiance.

  "Oh, but Nick, I think you misunderstood. As I said, I have more than two hundred Afterlights, and I didn't lie." Then she smiled a terrible smile. "I have a thousand. That's certainly more than two hundred, isn't it?"

  As the words hit him, and he realized what it meant, his own will began to collapse. She had a thousand souls. She would handily defeat his army. Now the pressure inside of him--the pressure he had been holding back since stepping into the vortex--could no longer be held. He felt a dam inside him rupture. His vision blurred and went dark. He felt everything begin to dissolve as the last bit of him gave in to the sickly-sweet cancer. What began as a small stain on his face was now all that remained of him.